Pardon My French

I will start tomorrow. It’s a little like saying: Tomorrow, I shave for free. It never happens. And even if I start tomorrow, which will never happen, for how long will I keep doing it? It’s not even my language. And if it was, for how long will I keep writing for free? That’s the question amateur writers ask themselves all the time. As if writing could bring fame and fortune. When it only brings frustration and fatigue. How desperate are we to think that we can make it in this world by writing a novel? Harry Potter’s syndrome not in the sense that we believe to be the fictional character himself, but the author herself. I guess I should call it the Rowling’s syndrome. Every writer in the making wants to be Rowling. Nulla dies sine linea. It was Zola’s motto written in letters of gold above the mantelpiece in his study at Médan. Every French kid knows about it, that’s something we learn in school when we first read one of his novels. No day without a line. In letters of gold. Today it translates by no day without a dollar. Only the gold matters. But because the dollar never comes, why bother about the line?